The Veil of Hypatia

“Raphael paints wisdom…” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Raphael’s Great Room

School of Athens is an iconic fresco, almost as well known as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Raphael’s Sanzio’s most celebrated masterpiece conveys, perhaps better than any other single artwork, the Renaissance return to Classical thought.

In the center foreground of the painting, we recognize Raphael’s contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci as Plato, holding the book Timaeus and pointing up to the sky. His companion, Aristotle gestures his forefinger down to the Earth, grasping his book Ethics with his left hand. This section of Raphael’s painting – in the center of the Lyceum - has been used on the cover of countless philosophy textbooks, making the snapshot of these two most important figures in the history of ideas as iconic as the artwork itself. We also see Michelangelo who was busy next door painting the interior of the Sistine Chapel, depicted as Greek philosopher Heraclitus, crouching in the foreground next to a solid cube of marble. His was the very last image to be included in the painting.

The School of Athens is part of a much larger masterwork, one of the most impressive immersive paintings or “virtual worlds” ever designed in the past 500 years. This painting represents only one frescoed wall of the most brilliantly illustrated room in history – the Stanza della Segnatura, one of “Raphael’s Rooms” in the Papal Palace of the Vatican. Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel is much more widely known than Raphael’s Stanza and towers above it at almost four times its size. But the walls of this small room have held one of the world’s most intriguing stories. For its beauty and opulence this room is visited daily by hundreds of tourists to the Vatican - all who are unaware that the Stanza della Segnatura holds an important key to visual language with a host of secrets embedded inside.

The Stanza della Segnatura is at once temporal, spatial, literal, symbolic and metaphorical. Every square inch of the room shimmers with significance. The most memorable of Raphael’s four stanzas is a sophisticated expression of Ars Memoria, a 3-dimensional “book of books,” a history in geometry and image. As an immersive tribute to humanity, this room holds no equal. Yet for the first two centuries after it was created, this stanza, a private library to the popes and the room where the most important documents were signed, was only seen by the eyes of the few elite elders in the heart of the Vatican Church.

The stanza’s iconographic narrative and its harmonic interplay between contradictory traditions forms a visual symphony that has beguiled generations of art historians. The elusive meanings and vibrant mastery of visual language in the stanza have drawn many interpretations of through time.  To this day, new analyses continue to surface as we try to deconstruct the intent behind the many signs and symbols Raphael wove into his masterwork.

Through the gilded paintings of the room’s interior, Raphael enhanced the proportions of the ceilings in order to capture the wisdom of the divine macrocosm. He used one of the curved walls to frame the ideals of science in the architecture of ancient philosophy. He imbued another with the dimensions of heaven and the evolution of 1500 years of Christianity.

With a deft hand, the “Prince of Painting” articulated the point of view from the middle of the room, leading our eyes up to Mount Parnassus, home of the Greek God Apollo and the ancient abode of the Muses. Here he filled the mountain with mythic history, epic poetry and lyric song from the ancient, classical and medieval worlds. Finally, in the Cosmatesque mosaics of the stanza’s spectacular marble floor, Raphael’s geometric iconography echoed the traditions of the Jews, the Persians, the Romans, and the Greeks through symmetric pattern, repetition and ratio.

The images on every square inch of Raphael’s immersive masterpiece unify poetry, theology, jurisprudence and philosophy through simple themes of “Beauty, Truth and Goodness.” During the height of humanism, its pervasive symbolism also unified Paganism, Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, the Torah, the New Testament of Christianity, Zoastrianism and the Kabbalah. It was only through Raphael’s consummate mastery that this room, with its intentional fusion of religious symbolism and the figures of ancient science, was able to remain intact in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church for over 500 years.

The Cartone of Raphael

In School of Athens, we will recognize many ancient historical figures – Euclid, Diogenes, Averroes, Epicurus, Zeno, Socrates, Alcibiades. Yet it is who we do not recognize that matters most in the syncretic history captured by Raphael.  This ambiguous figure cloaked in pure white, whose painted semblance on the left of the fresco looks more like Raphael himself who stands to the right of the wall next to Zoroaster and Ptolemy - each balancing spheres of Celestial and Terrestrial worlds in their hands.  Yet this striking figure seems to be set apart from the whole. Standing out in counterpoint, she looks straight at us from the painting, as if Raphael was beckoning the viewer to look more closely at this figure in his crowd of mental giants. Her feminine presence in the left of this masterful fresco, looking out behind Pythagoras himself, can be seen even more clearly in the visage that set the stage for Raphael's painting – the cartone.

New historians may begin to rewrite this history of intentional error. They will be aided by the difference that appears between Raphael’s sketch and his finished fresco. His cartone laid bare a unique kind of face. It is the face of the woman who stood at the crossroads between ancient art, science, philosophy and the medieval rise of the religious world - the last scientist/curator of the great Library in Egypt - philosopher, scientist and mathematician, Hypatia of Alexandria. 

Derived from Italian, cartone means “paper”. Paper can be traced back to the year 105 CE in China and paper production to the 6^th century. From there papermaking spread to Baghdad and Morocco between the 8^th and 10^th centuries and much later, to Europe. Italian Renaissance masters used paper and an ancient practice to set their first iteration of their frescos onto the walls.

We can see the first intentional image of hands depicted on the walls of Las Cuveas de los Manos in Argentina. Over 8000 years ago, Neolithic artists blew powdered colors around the outlines of their fingers, leaving an indelible mark on the history of art and communication. 

 

Returning to the same age old practice as these artists used, Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo each sketched full-sized cartoons of their large murals on the paper and pricked tiny holes along the contours. They then would blow charcoal through tiny holes onto the walls beneath. Each charcoal “sketch” blown onto the wall would lay the figured groundwork for the intricate painting that followed. When the mural was complete, the cartoons themselves would often be destroyed.

 

Raphael’s complete cartoon for School of Athens is considered “the most remarkable object of its kind surviving from the Renaissance.” As the largest and most well known example of this obscure genre of preparatory art, Raphael’s unique artifact also tells a visual story behind the story.

"Unveiling Hypatia" digital montage by Tony DeVarco

Hypatia's Veil

In Raphael’s cartone of a roomful of men, one figure wears the classic transparent veil of a woman – a common article of clothing in Renaissance paintings. Looking closely at Hypatia’s face in the cartoon, you can just make out the veil above her eyes. The same veil that is not present in the final painting.

Hypatia’s eyes carry with them a famous secret we’ve danced around for centuries.  A story is told that when Raphael completed the cartoon for his fresco and showed it to the bishops, they were appalled that he would depict a “known heretic” in the center of the painting. Her presence in the painting would run counter to the beliefs of the faithful. They refused to let him include Hypatia.  Raphael complied; he dropped the veil and changed the eyes a little to make her face a bit less feminine. But the figure was kept intact in the final painting – she was still there enveloped in a bright white oversized cloak. Yet even the most up to date edition of the book sold at the Vatican on the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Stanzas, states that the figure in white is based on Francesco Maria Della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, the nephew of Pope Julius II who originally commissioned the room. Lost is any reference to Hypatia.

In the same way that controversial installation The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago celebrates through art what still cannot be discussed in our history texts or religious institutions, Raphael ignited our memories of female intelligence with his veiled inclusion of one of our greatest ancient scientists.

The Dinner Party was a powerful collaborative artwork produced in the mid-1970s by Judy Chicago and a number of artists - it became a landmark in feminist art. The installation featured a huge triangular table with place settings for 39 historical and mythical women - 13 on each of its three sides. The triangle was surrounded by tiles inscribed with the names of 999 other notable women. Chicago's stated purpose for this piece was to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record." It was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in 2007 for permanent display.  In one of the three corners of this famous triangular table sits Hypatia's beautiful place setting, amongst the settings for other dinner guests whose names must still be reinjected into our conversations - Hildegard von Bingen, Saint Bridget, Sappho, Aspasia, Boudica, Eleanor of Aquitaine and so many others. Jan Du Bois, one of Judy's collaborators spent one year of the five year project to embroider and weave Hypatia's memorable place setting.

Each generation, women come together to help each other tell our lost and forgotten stories - more often than not, using the language of art. Photographer Barbara Morgan’s profoundly singular image  of Martha Graham’s most famous solo,  Lamentation captures her fully veiled in a jersey tube.

Barbara's famous photograph of Lamentation strangely resembles the outlines of contemporary Taliban women in their blue full figure obscuring burqas. Images of women in these settings ask us to feel so emotionally present that we may decide to cast aside all painful veils and speak a different kind of truth.

Martha Graham discusses her 1930 dance, Lamentation followed by the solo

Remembering Hypatia

Born in year 370 of the Common Era, Hypatia was a highly respected scientist and beloved teacher in her day; she curated thousands of intellectual works in the great library of Alexandria before its final demise.  But her untimely, violent death is as remarkable as her life, and is a tale told more often than the story of her influence on the history of philosophy, astronomy and mathematics.

Hypatia’s brutal murder occurred when she was at the youthful age forty-five. The Church was rising up to stamp out the last vestige of Paganism and Neoplatonism, and with it, much of ancient science. Fifth century historian, Socrates Scholasticus writes “…they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.” Saint Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, was found to have incited the band of Christians to kill her. He was sainted by the Church 1300 years after her murder.  

What happened to our memory of Hypatia’s contributions to the history of human knowledge? Her design for the plane astrolabe and invention of the hydrometer influenced the long development of our scientific instruments. Her work was expanded on by Descartes, Newton and Leibniz, but her name was not included. Her commentaries on Apollonius’ Conics and Diophantus’ Arithmetica likely influenced Johannes Kepler’s discovery of first law of planetary motion and his famous conjecture on the close packing problem. To this day we still do not know how much of her father Theon’s work Hypatia actually wrote herself.  But these are liminal stories that nobody asks about and very few tell.

We can find such stories in the margins of historical narrative, in the illuminated ambiguity of our most treasured artworks. They are released through the brush of the artist and pen of the poet, the fiction of the novelist and the quasi-histories of contemporary film. They elevate our understanding without challenging our belief systems, without upsetting the status quo – through beauty, lyrical song and powerful entertainment. Most of us have learned to tell our bright truths circuitously, abiding by Emily Dickenson’s dictum, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant -success in circuit lies -too bright for our infirm delight -the truth’s superb surprise.”  

Yet some of us have gone straight to the point.

In the 13th episode of his classic series Cosmos first shown in 1980, Carl Sagan takes us from Eratosthenes who first measured the sphere of Earth to Ptolemy who started the Library of Alexandria to the many scholars who worked there through its centuries long history. He comes to the story of Hypatia and the demise of the largest library in history with our loss of thousands of history’s most important works. 

In “Who Speaks for Earth?” Sagan provides the historic context and offers a contemporary moral for Hypatia’s story. He goes out on a limb to show his personal point of view by offering an extraterrestrial view our civilization - a view that can only come from looking back at Earth from space. He describes the exorbitant cost of the nuclear threat, the senselessness of war and the indulgence of nationalism; he decries the overabundance of racial, sexual and religious chauvinism.  He chastens the last gasp of this outmoded form of human enterprise. And finally he admonishes us to make a shift, saying “A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.” 

Carl Sagan's "Who Speaks for Earth?" from COSMOS

After almost thirty years we still seem no closer to his call to vision the superorganism - to awaken our global heart. To do this would require a different kind of consciousness, a new level of connective self awareness that comes from looking in the mirror at collective intelligence, the history of cross-fertilization and syncretism so that we may finally remember the histories we have so long forgotten - stories we still forget today.

In 2009 we will see the release of the first movie about the life of Hypatia. It was filmed on the small island of Malta in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, the home of the 5000 year old remnants of Tarxien temples and where artifacts of the Mother Goddess can be found at Ħaġar Qim and its other archeological sites. The movie is written and directed by gifted filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar. Alexandria’s Neoplatonic philosopher is played by Rachel Weisz.

I first heard about this movie last Summer from Martina Guillaumier, a young, vivacious design historian freshly out of grad school. Martina grew up in Malta where the new movie was filmed with its lavish sets capturing the flavor of Roman era Egypt. Martina carried out historical research for the movie's elaborate set designs. The movie's title, Agora, which means an “open place of assembly” in ancient Greek city-states - the kind of place that Hypatia shared her wisdom with her many male students. 

I met Martina when she came to California to work on a short film, Magdalene with her longtime friend Rebecca Cremona and my Neice, Leslie Lucey, both aspiring filmmakers. It took only moments for Martina and I to jump into a vivid discussion about Hypatia – with her work complete and the film already in post production, Martina knew the context of her story back and forward – as did I from over a decade of my own personal research.

How odd it was to meet anyone who knew so much about this veiled scientist of history! Hypatia had long been my name in Avatar, I too had worked with brilliant designers – but my work was in the early virtual worlds of cyberspace rather than on elaborate movie sets - to build a virtual version of Biblioteca Alexandrina for our VLearn3D world, the first virtual world devoted to international educators in the turn of our own century – the year 2000. 

Rebecca and Martina hosted a little dinner party for Leslie and I that evening with their own favorite homemade Maltese dishes. We toasted together to women of every place on Earth, to every era, and to Hypatia. Across generations we use new and emerging media to pay homage to this great scientist of the ancient world. When her story is freshly unveiled again to the world in 2009, this time on the big screen, the ancient memory of Hypatia will no doubt hit a very raw and fresh nerve in women of today – because her story is still our very own.

Goddess Sculpture, Tarxien Temple Malta [by Joonas L.]

Hypatia now wears a million veils - of blue and black and white - garments of every color and kind. She sleeps in the caves of Huayna Picchu, looks out through the cartone sketched for the Vatican. She walks in the trapezoidal tunnels of Cumae, the string skirted artifacts of Marija Gimbutas, looks at us through the geometric weavings of Mama Agus. Her voice echoes in the silent crystallography of Rosalind Franklin and sings through ancient ink with Elaine Pagels. She hikes the Guatemala highlands with Rigoberta Menchú Tum, warms the seat next to Rosa Parks, lights candles near the lake with Dr. Aung San Suu Kyi.

Hypatia sleeps in the strata of the Goddess, warm in the center of the hearth and home, lighting up the ephemeral halls of cyber libraries, nurturing the dreams of women, both simple and sublime.

We are the ones who must remember her name.